One name​​ reminds them of another, one story leads to a second, and pretty soon they’re laughing and crying all over again. That seems to be the only way to stay afloat. They let it wash over them, wave after wave of devastating sacrifice and tragic resolve, knowing there’s always another wave coming.

Because cancer just keeps killing these kids. It kills young mothers and loving fathers, and it kills teenagers who just want to play baseball and go to the prom and hang a poster on a dorm room wall.

But it doesn’t kill as many as it used to, and that means they’re winning.

So, yes, they’re going to beg for your money. They’re going to introduce you to suffering children and life-saving doctors and parents who put their babies in the ground and somehow still come back year after year because maybe they can save the next kid. They’re going to break your heart, then they’re going to mend it with the unthinkable strength of a child. And they’re going to keep doing it because it’s working. It’s actually working.

The 17th annual Jimmy Fund Radio-Telethon begins Tuesday on WEEI and NESN, two iconic Boston sports stations which carry the Red Sox games but devote 36 hours each summer to these stories of tragedy and triumph. You think David Ortiz is strong? Wait until you meet Ben Finer. You think Tom Brady knows how to live? That’s because you never met Todd Schwartz. Or Avalanna Routh. Or so many others whose stories turned a modest fundraiser into a New England institution.

The sadness can be unbearable, but the inspiration of these men and women, these boys and girls, has lifted an entire region, and with nearly $50 million raised, the radio-telethon is making a tangible difference.

Dr. Sidney Farber, considered the father of modern chemotherapy, devoted much of his work to the care of children. His outreach spawned the Jimmy Fund, which now raises money for adult and pediatric care and research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Boston baseball has been an integral part of spreading the word since the Jimmy Fund’s founding 70 years ago.

This is but a small part of the story. It’s the oral history of the WEEI/NESN Jimmy Fund Radio-Telethon, and like so much of Dr. Farber’s legacy, it all starts with one incredible kid.

TODD

Jason Wolfe (former WEEI program director): “That first year [in 2002], we put on a kid named Todd Schwartz.”

Janet Schwartz (Todd’s mother): “When Todd was a senior in high school, he was diagnosed with cancer. It was a rare kind for someone his age.”

Wolfe: “At the time, Glenn [Ordway] was hosting what was then the old Big Show, so he was the solo host and then there were co-hosts who were on with him, different members of the media. I know that Steve Buckley was on that day.”

Steve Buckley (Boston Herald columnist): “We were doing it from an area of Fenway Park that is basically [the restaurant] Game On now. That was some kind of weird function room that they had carved out.”

Schwartz: “I think my hesitation [about Todd going on the air] was probably more that he was such a wise guy most of the time. I was more thinking, ‘Oh my God, what is he going to actually say?’ He was the first to tell you that he was a goofball. And it was really one of the first times that I got to hear him say that he was a cancer patient out loud.”

Buckley: “Todd came in and sat down, and he was wearing a Red Sox cap and baggy jeans. He was, like, this really cool kid. That was my first takeaway. He was this really cool kid.”

Schwartz: “Todd was the kind of kid who had, when I tell you a million friends, he did. He would walk into a room and instantly he was friends with everyone. It wasn’t because he was the loudest [guy] in town. It was more because he just smiled at everything, so people were attracted to him.”

Glenn Ordway: (WEEI radio host): “We’re done with the eight-minute segment and he says to me, ‘Can I hang around …? I know all the other kids who are coming on, so maybe I can make some of these other kids feel a little bit better.’”

Wolfe: “His story was just so immensely powerful. He talked about, ‘I’m going to beat this.’ And he talked about the process that he has to undergo for treatment and what they do at the clinic to make him feel comfortable.”

Buckley: “We began doing this UMass thing because I went to UMass and he was at UMass and it turned into this big, ‘I’m challenging all UMass graduates to pick up the phone!’ That was him.”

Todd Schwartz during the 2002 telethon. | Photo courtesy of the Schwartz family

Schwartz: “He had hopes set on going farther away to college, but that wasn’t going to happen, so he ended up at UMass-Amherst where his amazing doctor, whose name is Dr. Loren Walensky, made sure he could also get his treatments in college. And he did that. He got through his freshman year. He was in, what we thought was remission, and but by May of his freshman year, it had come back.”

Buckley: “I remember thinking, ‘Wow, he’s going to beat this!’”

Wolfe: “The [radiothon] was in August, and he passed away that November [at 19 years old].”

Buckley: “I remember it vividly. … It knocked the breath out of me, because I didn’t know that he was in that condition.”

Schwartz: “[Todd] knew it.”

Buckley: “What he determined on that day [of the radiothon] was that action was needed, and his role that day was not to sit there and be sickly. It was to be demonstrative and to be loud and to challenge people, in this case UMass grads, to pick up the phone and make a donation to the Jimmy Fund. And that has stayed with me all these years.”

Schwartz: “I don’t think it was an act. I think it was a leap of faith. He really wanted — whatever he was going to say — he really wanted it to come to pass, to come true. But, he knew. There’s no question.”

Lisa Scherber (Dana Farber director of patient and family programs): “It’s just pure selflessness. It’s pure strength. You’ve got the kids who do really well who end up giving back, and then you get the kids who don’t [do really well], who are giving back as much as they can before their end.”

Schwartz: “He kept saying to [Scherber] … ‘We’re not here to color,’ because, at that time, she was really known as being the Play Lady [for her work with children]. ‘We’re not here for that. We need more things.’ And she kept saying to him, ‘OK, we’ll do something.’”

Fountain: “And we did! We changed our whole way of looking at things because of one person.”

John Dennis (former WEEI radio host): “When [he] first talked about taking 45 Jimmy Fund kids to Florida for a long weekend in spring training, Lisa and the staff said, ‘What, are you kidding me? We would need 45 caregivers!’ And Todd and the others said, ‘Well, why not do that?’ And they really challenged the system. … ‘Who says we can’t all get on an airplane and go to Florida for three days and watch the Red Sox?’”

Schwartz: “It had to be a terrifying thought to think, I can take these kids away somewhere? They’re all sick. They all have treatment. They all have plans. How do I do it? But when [Todd] passed away, [Scherber’s] first words to us were, ‘We’re making this trip happen.’ And that [next] spring, the spring training trip happened.”

Callahan: “It was very bold, and it seemed almost impossible, and now it’s a regular thing.”

Scherber: “When the kids are coming with us, and [some of them] are end-of-life kids, their parents are so amazing that they know their time with them is so limited, and yet, they know it’s important. They know that these kids need to feel normal.”

Callahan: “That was Todd Schwartz’s idea.”

Scherber: “And he knew that he was never going to benefit from it.”

Tom Caron (NESN studio and sideline reporter): “I was the sideline reporter in ’03, so I can remember going up into the suite where the kids were [for a teen trip to Baltimore’s Camden Yards] … and the emotion of that trip because Todd didn’t live to see it, it was as poignant as you can imagine because his memory was so vivid.”

Scherber: “That was his gift. He gave it to us, and every time I go on a teen trip, Todd is with me. Every time.”

Callahan: “Some of those beautiful little bald kids become beautiful adults, and some don’t. That’s the sad truth. There’s some great uplifting victories, and there are just some devastating defeats. The most incredible, emotional roller coaster. The Jimmy Fund Clinic is that way.”

Schwartz: “I think I would prefer to be famous for just about anything else. But I think that’s the kind of kid Todd was. Even if he had come out of this, I still think he would have made a difference. I don’t think he would have shut the door behind him. And if he had never had cancer, I think he would have been the next Jimmy Kimmel. He was just so funny and so magnetic. And although he probably would have liked to have been Dustin Pedroia, that we know probably wasn’t going to happen for a nice little Jewish boy.”

“JIMMY”

Joe Castiglione (Red Sox radio play-by-play broadcaster): “The Jimmy Fund was started in 1948 around the bedside of a patient they called Jimmy.”

Suzanne Fountain: “They just did a radio-telethon broadcast on the radio, raising money to get a TV for Jimmy. And Jimmy wasn’t even his real name. It was to protect his anonymity.”

Mike Andrews (former Red Sox infielder and Jimmy Fund chairman): “Dr. Farber, way back when he started in the ’40s, cancer was kind of, you didn’t want to talk about it, so he referred to his children as his Jimmys and Janes rather than by name. And that’s kind of the way it was.”

Castiglione: “The radio show was called Truth or Consequences with Ralph Edwards, and they did the radio show around [Jimmy’s] bed with the Boston Braves, who [went to] the World Series that year [with] Johnny Sain and Warren Spahn. And the kid apparently had a lot of personality, and it took off.”

Fountain: “Really, we got founded on radio-telethons, if you think about it.”

Andrews: “The radio part sometimes gets dropped [from the name today], but that’s the root of it.”

Castiglione: “When the Braves left town, then the Red Sox picked it up in 1953. And, of course, Ted [Williams] was a very big spokesman. … [Carl Yastrzemski] has a [plaque on the wall at Dana-Farber]. Mo Vaughn with a great story with [11-year-old patient] Jason Leader when he hit the home run for the kid. It just goes on and on, the great connection with the Jimmy Fund and the Red Sox players.”

Dave Dombrowski (Red Sox president of baseball operations): “There are a lot of connections [in baseball], but I think this is as strong of a connection in baseball that there is [for a charity].”

Larry Lucchino (Red Sox president and CEO emeritus): “It’s one of the unique assets and principles on which the Red Sox are built.”

Andrews: “I first became acquainted with the Jimmy Fund when I started playing for the Red Sox because that was [owners] Tom Yawkey and Jean Yawkey’s charity. … All the players on the Red Sox at that time — my rookie year was ’67 — we all knew what the Jimmy Fund was, and we all knew how important it was to Mr. Yawkey and Mrs. Yawkey.”

Castiglione: “Before it went back to advertising, [the Jimmy Fund] was the only sign at Fenway Park, and I think that helped players identify with it.”

Andrews: “We gave a full share of our World Series [bonus in 1967] to the Jimmy Fund in honor of the Yawkeys. And we weren’t making that much money then, so every dime counted, but it was that important to us.”

Fountain: “I remember meeting somebody one time and saying I worked at the Jimmy Fund, and [their son] said, ‘Oh, that’s the Red Sox.’ Their son was probably 7 years old, and I said, ‘How do you know that?’ And he said, ‘Oh, we listen to [team broadcaster] Ken Coleman on the radio and he’s always talking about the Jimmy Fund.”

Andrews: “When Ken Coleman was the executive director of the Jimmy Fund [in the ’70s and ’80s] … one of his things he wanted to do was to do these radiothons.”

Castiglione: “He would go to small stations around our network and do radiothons and raise three or four thousand dollars.”

Andrews: “We’d be at every little radio station in New England, and they’d put together some sort of a radiothon. What happened was that John Dennis, who was a big Jimmy Fund supporter at the time he was with WEEI … said, ‘You know, I want to make something bigger.’”

Fountain: “Mike Andrews and John Dennis were having a conversation at a golf tournament, is how I remember it.”

Andrews: “Yeah, we were just playing golf. I don’t know if it was a Jimmy Fund event. It probably was, because John, he hosted so many of those [events].”

John Dennis: “I said, ‘You know, it seems to me that there should be some sort of synergy here between WEEI and the Jimmy Fund.’ There’s got to be a way that we can take a morning or a couple of hours or maybe even from 6 o’clock in the morning when we sign on to 6 o’clock at night when the Red Sox game comes on — or whatever — where we can do some fundraising that way.”

Andrews: “That’s kind of the seed that got all of this going.”

Dennis: “Jason Wolfe, our program director, got involved and worked his ass off getting this thing together.”

Jason Wolfe: “I was named program director of WEEI in September of 1997, and the first couple of years, we were just trying to find our way. We really didn’t have any idea what we were doing. … As we started to see success, one of the things that I felt very passionately about is giving back to the community, and how do you create something, something special, that wasn’t just like, let’s do [another] golf tournament?”

Gerry Callahan: “[Wolfe] went almost full time on this thing every year, every summer. Beginning May or June, he would start putting in the hours and lining up the guests.”

Lisa Scherber: “To do it with a sports station, it makes no sense. But here it is, a sports station, and they have the biggest hearts.”

Callahan: “I guess maybe the Red Sox were the thread connecting us.”

Tom Caron: “I give WEEI a lot of credit for kind of breaking that barrier down. If there was any disconnect between a sports network and telling the stories of Dana Farber, I think they were the trailblazers in that first year.”

Fountain: “This was started when the new [Red Sox] owners took over.”

In January 2002, John Henry led a group with Tom Werner and two-time cancer survivor Larry Lucchino to purchase the Red Sox from the Yawkey Trust for roughly $700 million.

Lucchino: “Part of our approach to the Red Sox and Boston in 2002 was to honor one of the fundamental obligations of ownership that we talked about when we acquired the team. We talked about three or four fundamental obligations of ownership, and I think the fourth one was to be active and charitable and philanthropic and giving to the community. … The Jimmy Fund was the rock on which we were building this church, because the relationship was so strong. I felt very deeply about it having been treated at Dana-Farber earlier in my life.”

Wolfe: “I thought, what if we try to do something where we basically take up the entire day on the radio station, and we bring patients on, and doctors, and we let the story of the Jimmy Fund and what goes on there be discussed in a forum that otherwise wouldn’t ever really have taken place.”

Dale Arnold (WEEI radio host): “I remember the first year I was scared to death we wouldn’t make any money. I was afraid we would not do a good job of adequately telling the story and we wouldn’t get people to respond. … And don’t misunderstand my point. It’s not that any of us didn’t want to do it. I was just afraid it wouldn’t succeed.”

Scherber: “I just don’t think they realized what was happening here. I don’t think they realized how much this was going to really change the way things are done.”

Fountain: “I remember it was the last Friday in August, and there’s Mike Andrews going: ‘Are you kidding me? Nobody’s going to be listening. Nobody’s going to call in.’”

Andrews: “But I was one that thought the Pan-Mass Challenge [bike-a-thon] might be a nice $25,000 fundraiser. And I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, but I think they went over $50 million last year [alone]. So, that shows you what I know about fundraising.”

Callahan: “I remember us sitting in the corner of a room at Fenway and doing a one-day thing where we were hoping to raise, I think, $50,000 or $100,000.”

Fountain: “And we raised [just over] $300,000 in year one, which I think was the most we had ever raised at a first-time event. We’re all sitting there going, ‘Oh my God, this is awesome.’ The phones were ringing off the hook.”

Arnold: “Thankfully, I was wrong.”

Castiglione: “And, of course, the great story about the original Jimmy: Everyone thought he passed away because in 1948, there was no cure for leukemia. Then, maybe 20 years ago, his sister went to the Jimmy Fund, had all the medical records, and we found that he survived! He didn’t want any publicity. His name was Einar Gustafson, and he’s a truck driver from Maine. He turned out to be the perfect guy. He was a wonderful guy. Great sense of generosity. Just a great, low-key personality and did so much for the Jimmy Fund until he passed away [in 2001], but that was like a miracle to find him.”

DANNY

Dale Arnold: “Probably the most real that ever became to me was with a kid named Danny Williams.”

Gail Williams (Danny’s mother): “He was diagnosed in September of 2006 with osteosarcoma. … He had his femur removed, and they replaced it with a rod.”

Arnold: “They nicknamed him Flat Dan because when the kids went to visit the Red Sox for spring training [in 2007], Danny wasn’t well enough to go, so the kids brought a little cardboard cutout of Dan.”

Lisa Scherber: “You know [the children’s book] ‘Flat Stanley’? So, we made him a Flat Dan. He didn’t know what we were doing. We just took his picture and we put it on a big tongue depressor, like a popsicle stick kind of thing, and we took him with us. From the airplane to the hotel to meeting the players, we had Flat Dan with us. I have Flat Dan pictures doing everything.”

Williams: “Prognosis in the beginning was very hopeful. They hadn’t thought it had spread to his lungs, which is where osteosarcoma travels to. We kept going, but little by little, he really never got good news. There was nerve damage during surgery. He always had pain in his left leg and couldn’t feel his foot. And he had just incredible pain.”

Jason Wolfe: “The last time that we had him on the air [in 2008], he came with his parents, and it was tough watching them.”

Williams: “You could see that [Danny] didn’t feel well. He was in a lot of pain and nauseous from other things, and they said, ‘We can get you on early, Danny, so you can get home and get out of here.’ And he said, ‘No, I told people I was going to be on at this time. My friends will be waiting.’”

Wolfe: “But just to show you the power of these kids and why it meant so much to do this: he’s on the air, and he’s explaining that there’s nothing else the doctors can do for him.”

Danny Williams (on the air in 2008): “It’s spread to my lungs. And it’s also spread to my right knee, and my right leg, and also my spine. So, right now it’s at a point where, unless people donate money and find more clinical trials, there’s nothing much else that’s out there to do or try.”

Wolfe: “You just see Dale and Michael Holley — who were doing the midday show at the time — and they couldn’t talk. They just let him talk. And he couldn’t have been more calm.”

Williams: “We have a copy of that [interview], and when I used to look at it, I could see the look on Dale and Michael’s faces kind of change.”

Fountain: “I happened to be standing next to his mother, and his mother looked at me, and it was almost a sigh of relief. She said, ‘We didn’t know he understood he was that sick.’”

Scherber: “These kids get it. They get all of it.”

Williams: “He always did know what was happening, but he never really wanted to talk about it. I think we were a little surprised that he, in a public way, would have put it out there like that.”

Wolfe: “And then, of course, when the interview was over, the phones just explode off the hook. And I think they raised, at least for that year, more money in that hour than in any hour that we had.”

Arnold: “Michael and I got to know Danny. As we went forward, we got to visit with him, we got to know him. And as we were going on the air one day, we were at Gillette Stadium — it was a Patriots Monday — and I got word that Danny had died.”

Williams: “It was almost two years to the date [after his diagnosis].”

Arnold: “I’m not going to say it hit me like one of my own kids had died, but it hit me more emotionally than I ever thought possible. I talked about it on the air, and I had a hard time getting through it. In fact, we ended up having to go to break because I couldn’t talk after a little bit.”

Scherber: “It’s an amazing relationship we get with these parents and these kids, and I just feel like it’s a little bit of those relationships that are heard because of this telethon.”

Arnold: “Michael and I went to Danny’s funeral, and Danny’s mom, Gail, spoke at the funeral, and I just thought: That’s the strongest woman I’ve ever seen in my life. I couldn’t put one foot in front of the other if I were in her position, and here she is, eloquently, beautifully eulogizing her son at his funeral.”

Williams: “I remember saying to my sister, ‘I wonder what Danny was thinking.’ And she was like, ‘He knew. He knew, and he was carrying us all through it.’”

Scherber: “I haven’t really done the Flat Dan thing again. I can’t.”

Arnold: “I said to Lisa, we were leaving Danny’s funeral, and I said, ‘How do you do this? I mean, this has wiped me out. How do you do this all the time?’”

Scherber: “I think it cuts both ways. The sadness is so devastating. It’s so devastating. But then the joy is so joyful. I think being [at Dana-Farber], we grab those moments.”

Rose Mirakian-Wheeler (NESN coordinating director): “If you’ve ever been to the Jimmy Fund Clinic, in a strange way, it’s a happy place, even though it’s a sad place.”

Dawn LeClair (daughter Madison was diagnosed in 2014): “I met someone my first week [at the clinic] and they said, ‘It’s the best place you never want to be.’”

Tara Daniels (diagnosed with cancer three times): “I went into the Jimmy Fund one day with a fever. It was just a rainy, yucky day out, and they were having a Pig Party. I have no idea why it was called a Pig Party, but there were pigs everywhere! There were stuffed pigs, and there were pig stress balls, and this and that, all pig-related. It was a party. It just made this day that was so stressful — because when you have a fever, that’s the worst thing in the world as a cancer patient; they stress it so, so much — and it took my mind off of it. And that’s a regular occurrence there.”

Ben Finer (diagnosed with cancer in the sixth grade): “Nothing ever felt empty. It felt like everyone at and around the Jimmy Fund was trying so hard and doing everything in their power to make the lives of the kids there [better]. Give them some semblance of normalcy and happiness.”

Sean McGrail (NESN President and CEO): “If you just go down and tour the Dana-Farber one time and see what they’re doing, and talk to some of the people who work there, and talk to the patients, you can’t come out without being a changed person.”

Dale Arnold: “That [first telethon] ultimately led to my first visit over the clinic — my first of many — and the minute I stepped out of that clinic, I couldn’t wait to get on the air. I couldn’t wait to do it.”

Gerry Callahan: “If everyone can see it and feel it, they wouldn’t need a radiothon. People would just write a check. People would just give.”

McGrail: “It’s probably a long time from now, but that’s the end-game, to put ourselves out of business here.”

Callahan: “Write a check. Give us your credit card. Fifty bucks. A hundred bucks. That’s the easy part. The hard is what these kids are doing. They’re fighting the traffic trying to get into the Dana-Farber, and then they’re sitting there all day getting poison pumped in them and losing their hair and throwing up and struggling and hopefully getting through it.”

Scherber: “People say, does it get easier? I think it gets harder for us the longer we’re here because it’s like, oh my gosh, how many times can I see this clinical trial not work on this child? But then I think, oh my gosh, two years ago this child wouldn’t be here because [this treatment is new]. So, I love hearing our doctors on the air talk about the new trials and the new protocols and the new all of these things. And that’s really cool, because that gives us hope. Because you’ve got to have hope, and I do think that’s what this radio-telethon does. I think it gives hope.”

AVALANNA

Callahan: “It was bizarre because she was one of those kids, you looked in her eyes, and you’re like, ‘You’re 3! You’re not supposed to be this old soul. You’re just a kid.’”

Joe Zarbano (current WEEI program director): “It was amazing just to hear some of the things that came out of her mouth.”

Callahan: “She was the star, man. She was just so funny and entertaining. She liked the cameras. She liked the attention. She’s the one who married Justin Bieber. … She had to be 5 or 6 when they did it, but [the Jimmy Fund Clinic nurses] staged a wedding. They had a cardboard cutout of, I think it was [Dustin] Pedroia or [Tim] Wakefield or someone, and they put Justin Bieber’s head or face on it, and then they had everything there. They had music and food and wedding guests. They performed a wedding where Avalanna got to marry Justin Bieber, and everyone just had a blast.”

Justin Bieber (on Twitter in 2012): “just got the worst news ever. one of the greatest spirits i have ever known is gone. please pray for her family and for her. … RIP Avalanna. i love you”

Callahan: “Justin Bieber visited her. They flew her down to New York. He met her in a hotel. They played Candy Land. I promised that day, to her parents, that I would never make fun of Justin Bieber again. And it’s been a tough promise to keep, but that’s the one thing he did, man, that you could never take away from him. It was amazing.”

Mirakian-Wheeler: “Avalanna was a cutie. You wouldn’t have known she was sick, the way she played. She used to do people’s nails.”

Callahan: “While we’re on the air, we’re talking to her parents — Cam and Aileen were sitting there — and she said, ‘I want to paint your nails.’ Live. We were on NESN, we were on radio, and she broke out the nail polish, and she started painting my nails while we talked to her parents.”

John Dennis: “Everybody remembers her painting Gerry’s fingernails, I think it was purple or pink, but a year later we went and saw her in the hospital, and she was in bed, and the subject of the nails came up again. And Gerry put his hand out and said, ‘Are you going to paint my nails again?’ And you know what she said to him? ‘Where’s your wedding ring? Why don’t you have your wedding ring on?’ Here’s a 5-year-old busting Gerry’s balls!”

Zarbano: “Avalanna Routh painting Gerry Callahan’s nails, it’s absolutely adorable. And I think people have a certain perception of Gerry. You watch that video, and that perception is completely changed, and you get to see the real Gerry Callahan.”

Callahan: “I first met her when she was 3. I think she passed away at 6. … She was just so smart and mature and articulate. I know radio talk show hosts who aren’t as eloquent as she was.”

Jason Wolfe: “It’s a very, very personal connection. And so, as hard-edge as Callahan, for example, can sometimes be on the air, this is as genuine as you’ll ever see him or hear him, because he feels it.”

Lisa Scherber: “I love seeing these sports [talk radio] guys that everyone gives so much crap to, you know? They have the biggest hearts, and this impacts them, and this touches them. To see them in this world, and to allow their listeners to see them in a more human form, I think it’s also a benefit. … So, it always bothers me when I hear negative stories [about them]. I’m like, ‘Oh gosh, you just don’t know them.’”

Zarbano: “As someone who was a WEEI listener before I worked there, I was always curious about it. Whenever you hear someone, or you see something, who you’re used to hearing one way.”

Scherber: “Assholes. Yeah.”

Zarbano: “And then that persona is completely different in a separate setting, it’s interesting, you know? But our guys, they really go above and beyond, and they’re very passionate about it.”

Dennis: “I’m not sure it gets me into heaven, but I’d like to think it gets me not kicked out.”

Callahan: “You know you’re going to meet some kids and some parents who are going to rip your heart out, you know? You just know it. … Normally, when we do our show, you have to be ready to read the papers and watch the games and watch the news. You don’t have to do much of that [for the radio-telethon], but you do have to be ready to have your heart ripped out.”

Wolfe: “It’s just real to them. We’re friends with these families. I’ve been to funerals. The [on-air] talent have been to funerals. We keep in touch with the families to see how they’re doing.”

Sean McGrail: “All of the moments you see are genuine moments.”

Suzanne Fountain: “I don’t watch the Housewives shows except for the one or two times I’ve seen it, but I just think, ‘That can’t be real. They had to make that stuff up for TV.’ This is just from the heart, from your gut.”

Dennis: “I’ll steal a line from Dale [Arnold], and I’ll give Dale credit for it [because] he was the first one who said it, but everybody feels the same way: What we do on a daily basis is the fun and games department, and we like chaos, and we like crazy stuff and controversy and all that. But without question, [the radio-telethon] is the most important two days that WEEI has on our calendar. It’s meaningful. It literally is life and death.”

Zarbano: “Glenn [Ordway] was treated [at Dana-Farber]. They found a tumor in Glenn back in 2015, and he was treated there. Callahan’s father was treated there. [Kirk] Minihane’s mother was treated there. My father was treated there.”

Callahan: “I was treated myself, but it was not at Dana-Farber. It was at a satellite up on the North Shore. I had radiation. My first call when I got diagnosed was to Mike Andrews. Just said, ‘Point me in the right direction.’”

Zarbano: “My dad passed from cancer in 2016. … You’re like, ‘oh man, I hope this doesn’t happen to me,’ and I’m thankful it’s never happened to me, and then all of a sudden it does. And then it kind of completely changes your perspective.”

Tom Caron: “I’m walking out the door at home to go into NESN to go to the studio [in 2015], and I get the call that [tests were positive for] lymphoma. So, my doctor here says, ‘I’ve got a great oncologist in Natick. You should go see him next week.’ I said, ‘I’m not going to go to Natick, I’m going to go right to Dana-Farber.’”

Ordway: “I had a very rare cancer, and I spent three days in one of the major hospitals in this town, and they couldn’t figure out what it was. But over there [at Dana-Farber], there was research, and they were able to figure it out. This is where the money’s going.”

Dale Arnold: “I think people know when they hear us — from Kirk and Gerry to Glenn and Lou [Merloni] and Christian [Fauria] and me and Rich [Keefe] and all the people in between who have been with us, John Dennis and Michael Holley — I think everybody has understood that we mean this. We care about this.”

Scherber: “I love the guys [at WEEI]. I’m so protective of them, which, I don’t think they need my protection, but I know they can be real assholes sometimes. I just look at a person, their heart, and they have good hearts. They might be stupid sometimes, but the heart’s there. That’s the important thing, right?”

Arnold: “It was sweet of her to [say] that. We’re probably protective of her, except she doesn’t need any protection from anybody.”

Callahan: “She’s the greatest. She’s so legit. … I have been to wakes with her, and it is so real. A lot of doctors are distant and clinical and they don’t want to become attached. Some nurses don’t want to become attached. Lisa becomes attached. Lisa’s been to lots of wakes and lots of funerals, and she’s as real as it gets.”

Makhi Joseph, 8, of Boston is congratulated by Lisa Scherber, known as the “Play Lady” of the Jimmy Fund, and former Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek, after throwing out a ceremonial first pitch in 2013. | Photo by Michael Ivins/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images

Arnold: “I think sincerity matters. We may talk a lot of crap stuff the other 363 days a year, but those two days [of the radio-telethon], it’s real.”

Callahan: “I couldn’t do it solo. I did it with John Dennis for years. I do it with Kirk now, and sometimes I’ll get choked up and just look at them and say, ‘I need a minute.’ They’ll do the same to me. We know it’s going to happen. It happens every year. You just hear the stories, and especially these kids.”

Dennis: “Whether you agree with our take on sports of politics or whatever the case may be, the one thing I think 100 percent of us agree on … is that this is a devastating thing that is in our midst and we need to figure out a way to unite and do everything we possibly can to deal with it and battle it.”

Arnold: “We all feel the same about this thing. This is one thing where we don’t have any disagreements.”

BEN

Ben Finer (cancer patient and past radio-telethon guest): “I remember not really comprehending a whole lot of what was going on. I was kind of just in treatment and was given tickets to the [Red Sox] game and knew that they did the radio-telethon, and they asked me if I wanted to be on. I said, ‘Sure.’ I was sitting there in front of the [microphone]. I wasn’t really thinking about being on a show.”

Gerry Callahan: “That freakin’ kid was amazing.”

Jason Wolfe: “I think he was 13 at the time. He was on with his father, and he talked about how, not that hope was lost, but that they were very concerned. I think they were waiting for a bone marrow transfer. Didn’t know exactly how that process was going to play out.”

Finer: “The easiest way to look it up is just look up the thing Jon Lester had. That’s what I had.”

Callahan: “Looking at this kid, and he said, ‘I don’t worry about me.’”

Finer (on the 2009 radio-telethon): “The only reason I’m worried about dying is that, I just, it would hit my family so hard and everyone that I know. I don’t think they could take it. I don’t really care what happens to me, but if I’m gone, my family would go straight down the hill.”

Callahan: “We were all a mess.”

Suzanne Fountain: “This was in August, and in November he qualified for a transplant and had a transplant.”

Wolfe: “He lived!”

Finer: “I’ve done three years of college, will be doing a fourth soon. I have a job. I have friends I see every day. And I would never be anywhere like this without the people of the Jimmy Fund.”

Wolfe: “In some part, the money that was raised through this event saved his life.”

Callahan: “It almost, in a way, it captured the attitude of a lot of the kids.”

Finer: “When I was first diagnosed, I was in sixth grade, and I had people who were friends of mine that I saw every single day, and that’s what made them friends is that I saw them every day. And when I got sick and was suddenly out of school, I’d heard about, I [won’t] see them every day, so [it felt like] I’ll never see them again. But so many people around me were still trying to keep in touch, and I think that made some kind of connection in my head that these people, I exist in their lives even if I’m not right there. And if I wasn’t there anymore, that would be a big deal to them.”

Callahan: “There’s an eerie maturity to a lot of (the kids), and I don’t think it’s some magical thing. They grow up fast. They look into the abyss before they should have to and think about life and death.”

Wolfe: “It was really hard to go into [the first year of the radio-telethon] and think, how are these kids going to have the strength to do this? Because they’re talking about the end of their life, which is coming.”

Lisa Scherber: “Without a doubt, I think [the radio-telethon] gives them a sense of power, and a sense of: This is my story. I’m telling it. … I’m going to fight for this money. I’m going to fight for this clinical trial. And if I don’t get it, I want these kids who come after me to get it. … For any kid to know [that opportunity], it’s very powerful. It’s truly a powerful thing.”

Larry Lucchino: “Not only does it feel good. I think we can demonstrate that it does good.”

Dr. Stephen Sallan (Dana-Farber chief of staff emeritus): “I’ve been doing cancer medicine since 1973. … I would say there’s probably been more progress, maybe five-fold more progress, [during the 16 years of the radio-telethon] than there was in that [previous] 30 years.”

Fountain: “We’ve just gotten the ability to do so much more. And you see all of that on the radio-telethon. There’s not any other event that allows us to send that information to so many people.”

Dr. Sallan: “When the (human) genome was discovered, it’s like somebody took our quiver that had an arrow or two in it and filled it to capacity.”

Wolfe: “I was privileged to be on the visiting committee for the Jimmy Fund for 10 years. Every year, we used to go and listen to the latest research from the top scientists that they have. And this is information that doesn’t normally get to the public. … We wanted to highlight certain doctors who were on the cutting edge of various research that we just felt was important information to get out, and the community at large just grabbed onto it.”

Fountain: “We make sure they have all that information to share with folks, because that’s what the listening audience wants to listen to, too, that there is progress being made with the money that they’re spending. We are able to be good stewards of the money.”

Dr. Sallan: “During this same period of time, the relative proportion of research dollars from the government — from the National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Health — was decreasing compared to in the past. … Thus, the role of philanthropy, the role of the Jimmy Fund, the role of the WEEI radio-telethon, has become hugely more and more important because Uncle Sam is not pulling his weight in the way that he always had before.”

Tom Caron: “I was [at Dana-Farber] last week visiting some patients, and I was talking to one patient, an adult, and he had a blood disorder. I can’t remember what it was, but it’s incurable. They don’t have a cure for it. And, I’m waiting for [him to say], ‘Oh my God,’ and he said, “But we can treat it!’ They don’t have a cure, but they can treat it. So, it’s manageable.”

Arnold: “We’ve visited with a lot of the same doctors every year, but every year they come in and they tell us, ‘Oh, there’s something new now. We’re doing something new now. There’s immunotherapy now.’ The strides they’ve made — they haven’t beat this thing yet — but there are some cancers now that these kids get that would have been death sentences, and they’re not anymore.”

Callahan: “Every year, I make [the doctors] tell this statistic. It’s childhood leukemia, and a lot of the kids have one kind of leukemia or another. But, in general, childhood leukemia 40 years ago — when I was a kid and my next-door neighbor got it and died — I believe the cure rate was 8 or 10 percent. Now it’s 85 [to 90] percent. It literally was a death sentence two generations ago.”

Dr. Sallan: “And also, very importantly, for that 90 percent who are cured, now we can start asking questions that say, could we do as well with less toxicity and less putting kids through tough chemotherapy? I call that, turning the screw to the left. Taking something away so that they have less toxicity while they’re being treated, and perhaps more importantly, less lifelong complications from treatment.”

Callahan: “To go from 10 percent to [90] percent is why we beg for money every year.”

Sean McGrail (NESN president and CEO): “The stats even over this time frame have gotten so much better so that something like 80 percent of children are recovering and something like 60 percent of the adults are recovering.”

Dr. Sallan: “That’s definitely true, and I wouldn’t hesitate to use the word ‘cured’ for those 80 and 60 [percent].”

Glenn Ordway: “The biggest difference from Day 1 to now … [is] how many kids are surviving, and these kids are coming back the second year, and the third year, and the fourth year. I hate to say it, but in the early days of this, we would have these kids on for a year, and then the next year we would ask where they were, and Lisa would say to us, ‘They didn’t make it.’”

Wolfe: “We decided to go to two days, I think it was in ’06, [because] we wanted more time to tell those stories of kids who made it. I get, as a listener, when all you’re hearing about is death and tragedy for 12 hours a day, that’s tough. It’s hard to broadcast it. It’s hard to listen to it. And as the years went on, and we got the sense that it was turning, it wasn’t so much about [sad stories] anymore. It was still some, and there unfortunately will continue to be, but there’s many more stories of hope.”

Lucchino: “And the way that happens is with fresh ideas for research and treatment, and those fresh ideas come from new and fresh dollars. So, there’s a really strong correlation between the amount of money raised and the speed with which we can conquer many cancers.”

Dr. Sallan: “As we start curing diseases that haven’t been cured, and when you can start curing diseases with a pill a day instead of a bone marrow transplant, the public gets it. … I think when people know their neighbors, or their family members, or someone [else] was the beneficiary of all this cool, new medicine, the word spreads. And we’ve been very blessed to have the support of the public.”

Scherber: “Those two days have become, really, story time. It’s like, listen to these stories. Let it change who you are. I think it does. I think everyone who tunes in for those two days, they can’t say, when that radio or TV gets shut off, that they’re not a different person. Because, they are. They’ve been touched.”

Finer: “I go to the Jimmy Fund once a year now for yearly checkups just to make sure everything is still gone. It’s a part of my life that will never go away. It’s an important part of my life. And the people at the Jimmy Fund are a part of me, and they always will be.”

INTERLUDE

Joe Castiglione: “There’s another moment I [could] tell you about.”

Jason Wolfe: “The Trump thing.”

Glenn Ordway: “We got a call one day from Donald Trump. We could tell by listening to him that it was the real Donald Trump, or it was a damn good impersonator. And at that time [in 2008], who was doing Donald Trump impersonations, you know? … So, he gave us $50 grand. Right there. Just like that. He goes, ‘Put me down for $50 grand. Send me the bill, and I’ll pay it right away.’ Like we were going to have to chase him down with bill collectors! ‘I’ll pay it right away.’ I remember that vividly.”

Wolfe: “We had him come out [previously in 2006] and throw out the first pitch. And when he was on the air doing an interview, someone had passed me a note from the clinic that we were $60,000 away from the previous year’s total. So, I gave that to Joe Castiglione, and he kind of intimated on the air …”

Castiglione: “’We’re $60,000 short of our goal,’ and [play-by-play broadcaster Jerry] Trupiano said, ‘Do you know anyone with that kind of money?’ It was a great line.”

Donald Trump (on the air in 2005): “I think I do. I think I might give you that $60,000. So, what is it now? What are you trying to get to?”

Castiglione: “Well, we’re trying to get to $2.6 million.”

Trump: “And you’re $60,000 shy?”

Castiglione: “Of the record.”

Trump: “Well, I’m going to give you $60,000 so you break the record.”

Wolfe: “He donated the money on the air, and then for three years after that, he donated his place at Mar-a-Lago for a huge fundraising dinner. He’s obviously a polarizing character now, but he was really supportive of that event for the few years that we had him involved.”

Donald Trump waves to the crowd before throwing out the first pitch during the radio-telethon in 2006. | Photo by Matthew J. Lee/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

MADDIE

Dale Arnold: “There are moments, too, that out of nowhere will just knock you over. Brock Holt, who is another guy I will never say anything bad about for the time and effort he puts in over [at the Jimmy Fund Clinic], he came last year because a mom of a kid who passed away was on the radiothon.”

Lisa Scherber: “Him and Maddie [LeClair] were super close. And Maddie didn’t even like baseball. … She just liked Brock.”

Dawn LeClair (Maddie’s mother): “Madison had osteosarcoma. … The day she was diagnosed [in 2014], I remember waking up at 2 o’clock in the morning. We both were like, ‘I can’t believe this is happening.’ She was 13, and I was like, ‘Can I sleep with you?’ I was lying in bed with her, and we both woke up, and we were facing each other, and tears were just rolling down her face. And I saw that child cry three times during her diagnosis. Three! That night was one.”

Holt: “She didn’t have hair [when we met], but she was so beautiful that I was kind of taken aback a little bit. But from that moment, it was every time I went to the Jimmy Fund or something [at Fenway Park] when they came to the field or anything, we were always kind of drawn to each other.”

Scherber: “And then when [Holt] got that nomination for the [Roberto Clemente Award for sportsmanship and community involvement], they wanted a Jimmy Fund kid to be in the picture [behind home plate], and so the only one I could ask was Maddie because she loved him. [But] she hated having her picture taken.

LeClair: “I was like, oh, that’s going to be a hard sell for Maddie.”

Scherber: “And she was like, ‘You know how much I hate this!’”

LeClair: “I was like, ‘Maddie, you just have to decide if you want to do this for Brock or not.’ She goes, just like this: ‘[Long exhale] I’ll do it for him.’”

Scherber: “So, she took that photo, and she was at Fenway Park, and everyone was watching.”

LeClair: “My daughter was clueless about baseball. … It wasn’t about that he was on the Red Sox. She just connected with him. … She always found the good in people, and she knew Brock was a good person. She did. She knew it from her core.”

Holt: “I was actually rehabbing with Pawtucket [in May 2017] and I got a message on Instagram from some random person and it said, ‘Hey, hit a home run for Maddie today.’ And that’s all it said. And I was like, I hope that doesn’t mean what I think it means.”

LeClair: “She was 13 [when she was diagnosed], and she was in treatment for two years and nine months and three days.”

Holt: “You want to see success and everything is working and the treatments are working and everything. She fought as hard as she could fight, and cancer took her from us way too soon.”

Scherber: “Brock came on the radio-telethon with her mom [a few months later].”

Arnold: “He just wanted to see her. In the middle of the interview, he said, ‘Im sorry, but I’ve just got to give her a hug.’ And he took the headset off, and he put it down, and he went around the table, and he just wanted to give her a hug. It was hard to watch that and not be affected by it.”

LeClair (during the 2017 radio-telethon): “I remember specifically when [Maddie] was in the hospital, she had just had surgery. She was not even 12 hours out post-op, and all of a sudden there was a knock on the door, and it was Brock. And he just said, ‘I heard my girl is here.’ And her face just lit up. I mean, she was just so happy.”

Holt (choking back tears during the 2017 radio-telethon): “She was a special girl, and I was just lucky to be friends with her and friends with her family. I miss her. I think the only thing that’s good about where she’s at now is that she’s not in any pain. She’s cancer-free. But I know all of us down here wish she was still here.”

LeClair: “I think probably the magic of that moment was that, they always have a way at the Jimmy Fund of surprising you and making your day just a little bit better regardless of what you’re going through. And they never told me that Brock was going to be there.”

Holt: “I hadn’t seen her since Maddie had passed away. … I can’t even begin to imagine what that’s like as a parent. So, just being there for her and being able to give her a big hug and telling her that we love her and that we’re praying for her — her and her whole family — was pretty special.”

LeClair: “[Brock and Maddie] just had this really cool relationship, so when he walked in, it was like reliving that. And Brock is the most genuine man.”

Arnold: “He could be in an 0-for-40 slump, and I’m never going to rip him.”

Joe Zarbano: “When Curt Schilling came on to talk about his cancer and how he got cancer from dipping, that was very emotional to see this man who was your hero growing up, who was so strong and [pitched through] the bloody sock. And to see what he looked like in the studio. He was beaten down. It was sad, you know? It was definitely emotional. That’s one that I’ll never forget.”

Glenn Ordway: “One year, Roger Clemens was scheduled to be on the radio-telethon and the whole steroid issue pops up with him and the trainer and claiming that they were shooting up his wife and him. I said, ‘Oh shit, there we go. We’re losing Roger tomorrow.’ Not only did Roger come on, but we told Roger in advance [that there would be questions about steroids]. … He said, ask me the questions. I was shocked. Shocked! And we did. It was the first question. We probably did five questions on it, and I was shocked that he answered them.”

Wolfe: “[Another time] we reached out to [Clemens] was actually during the trial, the steroid trial, and he still gave us $21,000.”

Castiglione: “Roger would go over to the clinic [when he was still a player]. A little girl didn’t believe it was Roger, so he ran back to the ballpark, put his uniform on, and came back. Then she believed it was really Roger. … What he does today, it was strictly his idea to (auction off) batting practice to you and 10 of your closest friends.”

Ordway: “Did you see how much money he raised [this year]? $95,000. He did it twice. First person bid $50,000, somebody [else] came in at $44,000, and he didn’t want to leave $44,000 on the table so he said, ‘I’m going to give two of them.’”

Gerry Callahan: “Some of the players are amazing. Some of them suck, as you probably know.”

Jason Varitek (former Red Sox catcher): “You don’t have many players who don’t find different ways to give back, and [the Jimmy Fund] is a unified way to be a part of something. Sometimes it’s just seeing a guy, or sometimes it’s [listening to] what they say, or it’s just physically being there.”

Tim Wakefield (former Red Sox pitcher): “It was an immediate connection for me. I felt like God gave me this platform to give back, and what better way to give back than to continue to relationship with the Jimmy Fund?”

Callahan: “There’s a great story about Tim Wakefield. He went over and visited everyone [at the clinic], and they said, ‘It’s too bad, there’s a kid, he really wanted to meet you. He’s a big fan, but he’s got chemo today.’ And Tim Wakefield sat in the kid’s room for like three hours.”

Wakefield: “I don’t know if it was three hours, but I waited for maybe 20 or 30 minutes.”

Callahan: “[The kid] came back to his room, and there was Wakefield sitting there waiting for him.”

Wakefield: “This kid’s going through chemotherapy, and he wanted to see me. So, how could I not stay, right?”

Arnold: “I’ve seen little kids climbing all over David Ortiz, and him holding them up and carrying them around.”

Suzanne Fountain: “Ortiz connected last year with a patient he met in the clinic many, many years ago, and she went and threw out the first pitch with him.”

Callahan: “We brought with us Julio Lugo one year. I know he’s not a [big name], but man, he was good with the kids. He was seeking out the Spanish-speaking kids so he could connect with them, and they just had an amazing time over there talking to people. He was great. And we went with Keith Foulke one year, and he was terrific. He got right on the floor and started playing games with the kids.”

Fountain: “The Celtics participate. The Patriots. The Red Sox. The Bruins. It’s the one time, I think, in town when they all get together for one cause.”

Callahan: “[Bobby Orr] is one of the greatest guys anyway, but he’s one of those guys who would do anything for these kids.”

Wolfe: “Major League Baseball has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to this over the last 20 years.”

Ben Finer (former teenage Jimmy Fund patient): “I think more than anything else, what impacted me was the lengths all the people like Jon Lester, and Carlton Fisk when we had a Jimmy Fund event at the Legends Suite, or Joe Andruzzi with the Joe Andruzzi Foundation. All of these famous people who have done such great things in their lives, and they’re concerned with kids like me. I think that’s what really [meant] something for me.”

Zarbano: “I think it was 2014 or 2015, we got all four Boston sports owners to do a segment together, and that was pretty cool just to see them talk and interact with one another off the air, and then to go on the air together. And that photo op. it was pretty special.”

Wolfe: “Steinbrenner was probably as big of a personality as there ever has been in baseball, and at that time he was still healthy and [he] just exemplified the rivalry between the Red Sox and Yankees, and now you had the owner of the Yankees — the hated Yankees — on the air at an event that’s taking place at Fenway Park, and he’s just being a real genuine guy. And at the very end he just says, ‘You know, I’m giving you 10,000 bucks.’ So, we were all, jeez, that’s unbelievable.”

George Steinbrenner (on the air in 2003): “I certainly like the Jimmy Fund and all it stands for.”

Wolfe: “Ken Coleman, who is obviously the former voice of the Red Sox, had recently passed away before the event that year. And we knew that he was close with Steinbrenner, so we called Steinbrenner up and asked if he would come on and just pay tribute to Ken Coleman, his friendship. We didn’t know he was going to give anything at the time, but he came on and he did a great interview.”

Associated Press (from a story written in 2003): “The Yankees’ boss made his donation in honor of Ken Coleman, the longtime Red Sox announcer who died Thursday at age 78. The two were once neighbors in Ohio before they moved to the East Coast for their respective baseball careers. Steinbrenner, who had just learned of Coleman’s death yesterday, called the late announcer a ‘prince of a fellow.’”

Wolfe: “We tried to make it clear to all the celebrities that we invited that we wanted them — and frankly, expected them — to do something. If it wasn’t giving of their own, it was helping us put the word out so that other people would give.”

Zarbano: “You name ’em, people from every single walk of life. Celebrities like Ben Affleck. Donald Trump was there in ’06 throwing out the first pitch. John Kerry. Tom Brady.”

Ordway: “[Bill Cosby] comes in there and he just takes over. … He wanted to stay on the air and do his whole routine!”

Wolfe: “When Ben Affleck came on the second year, he made a $50,000 donation. Tom Brady has donated a lot of money in the past.”

John Dennis (on the air in 2015): “Early this morning, I reached out to the quarterback of the New England Patriots. I said, ‘It would be really cool if you picked up the phone, called Dennis & Callahan this morning, and donated some money.’ And we could even make a joke about how you’re happy to give the money to the Jimmy Fund, but you don’t want to give any money to Roger Goodell. And Tom wrote me back. I just found it.”

Tom Brady (text message, as read by Dennis on the air): “I’m headed off to practice. Go Jimmy Fund! I will donate $50,000.”

Dennis: “Then he wrote, ‘Cool,’ question mark. Brady is in for $50,000.”

Wolfe: “In the beginning, we used to put out the word just to get name recognition, and we’d bring people on who were from wherever just because they were hot that year. … But in recent years, it’s been more focused on celebrities who have a connection to cancer and also local area celebrities who know the Jimmy Fund. I think that’s helped a lot.”

Singer Donnie Wahlberg (during the 2009 radio-telethon): “When we grew up (in Dorchester) everyone knew about the Jimmy Fund. It was a part of Fenway Park, the sign (in the stadium), and everyone knew about it. It’s one of those special things for the people of Boston and New England.”

Actor Casey Affleck (during the 2017 radio-telethon): “I used to work at Fenway Park. That was the only way I’d get to see games was sneaking in. I worked outside, and we’d jump the turnstile and watch a few innings. So, being here tonight is a really big deal, and I can’t think of a better occasion to be here for than the Jimmy Fund.”

Actor Mike O’Malley (during the 2011 radio-telethon): “What I love about this telethon in particular and the radiothon, it really does kind of shrink the community of New England, and just really the community of people to just show people pulling together when things really matter.”

Actor Michael Chiklis (during the 2014 radio-telethon): “A lot of people pass on it because they feel like they can’t afford it or anything, but you know, if everybody gives a little, that’s how you get it done. If everybody just picks up the phone and gives 10 bucks — a couple of Starbucks, guys, that’s it — if everybody in the entire area does that, then you’re going to be killing it.”

JORDAN

Suzanne Fountain: “You do all the best planning in the world, and then stuff just happens. Like Jordan Leandre.”

Rose Mirakian-Wheeler (NESN coordinating director): “He was treated for a long time, and he came on the telethon many times as a little boy who did the on-field activities.”

Jordan Leandre (former cancer patient): “[At 2 years old] I had Ewing sarcoma in my right leg, which is a rare form of bone cancer that’s more commonly found in children. It was a long process. It was, I believe, 14 rounds of chemo over 11 months. … I officially had been announced cancer-free, it was gone, in 2004, but I still had surgeries. They had to put a port-a-catheter in my chest. I had a few more surgeries on my right leg.”

Mike Andrews: “He sang [the national anthem]. I don’t even know how old he was. He was in a wheelchair.”

Glenn Ordway: “He was 4 years old. He couldn’t even walk. He had no use of his legs, and he was just this cute and funny kid, and he just battled through it.”

Leandre: “I always liked to sing at the hospital. They did these little talent shows, and I would sing in them. And Sarah McKenna, who was in charge of every single pregame ceremony at Fenway, she was looking for somebody to say ‘play ball’ on the day of the telethon [in 2004]. Lisa Scherber, she was like, ‘I can probably do one better for you.’ And it was me singing.”

Fountain: “Spontaneously — you couldn’t have said, OK, when he’s done, all of you get off the bench and run out onto the field — the players just ran onto the field.”

Leandre: “Kevin Millar, Curt Schilling, Gabe Kapler and I believe Dave Roberts was over there fist bumping and giving me baseballs. It was just a really cool moment. … I did it one time [as a 4-year-old], and I was asked to do it again, and [as part of the movie] Fever Pitch later on. Before you knew it, I was doing it at Game 5 of the ALCS in 2004.”

Andrews: “A couple of years later he sings it [in 2007]. One of the on-air personalities and I were on [the air] with him, and we talked him into — after he sang this time — to run the bases.”

Ordway: “He was such a respectful kid. He said, ‘I can’t do that. They won’t allow that.’ I said, ‘Screw them! Who’s going to stop you?’”

Mirakian-Wheeler: “I don’t think the Red Sox knew he was going to do that.”

Leandre: “When I went out there, it still wasn’t part of the plan for me to do that. And when I finished singing the anthem, I gave the microphone to Mike Andrews, and he told me to run to first base.”

Andrews: “And so, he limped around the bases as best he could.”

Fountain: “We found out later, you’re not really supposed to do that, because if you’re one minute late in broadcasting you can get fined or something, but no one would have ever contested that. But Jordan ran the four bases.”

Andrews: “It just totally brought the house down, and the fundraising that night, it just sent it over the top. Way over the top.”

Ordway: “There wasn’t a dry eye in the house. It was unbelievable. That was, right there, it was a moment [to show] this radio-telethon is working. Look what’s happening here! We saw this kid from the time he was in serious trouble to the point now where he’s living a normal life, the life he should be living.”

Leandre: “I think it’s just this innocent thing where I’m running the bases, showing people the miracle of the Jimmy Fund, the work they do, how they were able to save my leg and give me that opportunity to do that. Then people were reaching out to my family, and later reaching out to me and telling me whenever they need a good cry, a happy cry, they’ll put the video on of me running the bases.”

Fountain: “They broadcast that all night long.”

Mirakian-Wheeler: “For me, that was the greatest moment.”

Sean McGrail: “And then to see him grow up and have him back on the telecast year after year after year, and now playing baseball actively and in such a great place — the viewers have gotten to experience that firsthand.”

Andrews: “Kind of the good ending, is that Jordan is a very good high school pitcher, and he was throwing out the first pitch at the radio-telethon [last year].”

Leandre: “I’m not sure if it was the exact date, but it was 10 years since I ran the bases.”

Andrews: “They wanted me to catch him, and I’m going, ‘Oh my God, I haven’t caught a ball in years, and I’m going to catch a high school pitcher?’”

Leandre: “He was like, ‘I’m, like, 70 years old!’ He came up to me while we were lining up in the tunnel, and he was like, ‘Here’s the deal. Don’t throw it too hard.’”

Andrews: “Well, I think he took a little off.”

Leandre: “I lifted my leg, and I remembered him saying, don’t throw it too hard, so I decided maybe I would lob it in there. And I was so in between when I went to throw it, it just kind of slipped out of my hand and sailed on me.”

Andrews: “I don’t know if you ever saw this video. It went national.”

John Dennis: “He threw the pitch that hit the guy in the nuts!”

Tony Capobianco (former Eagle-Tribune photographer): “Would you believe me if I told you that when I saw the ball missing the catcher I didn’t think [once] that it was coming towards me?”

Leandre: “I threw it and I realized it was nowhere near the target. And then I saw the guy hunched over, and I was like, ‘Oh! I got him there!’ If you watch the video, you can see me trying me not to laugh.”

Capobianco: “An underrated factor was Wally [the mascot’s] reaction. Seemed like the only one to give a damn about my well-being at the time. Meanwhile, that kid gets a high five from the dude with a statue [Carl Yastrzemski] outside.”

Leandre: “My phone, it was pretty close to 100 [percent battery life] when I got to the field. And by the end of the second inning, it was dead because my phone was blowing up with people texting me. Even people I hadn’t heard from in years texted me being like, ‘Dude! What just happened?’”

Capobianco: “Kid walks to the mound on a red carpet. There’s a wall of revered old dues behind him. The PA announcer, who sounds like the voice of God, says, ‘Alright Jordan, fire it in there!’ and he throws a straight up breaking ball to break my balls! And when I say ‘me,’ I mean the shlub in the pink Polo.”

Leandre: “My brother went on like an exchange program for 10 days. He was in Belgium, and he said his host brother texted him and was like: ‘Your brother just made national news in Belgium, and we don’t even have a baseball league here!’ So, it spread the word worldwide. I guess you could say it’s an unfortunate way to do it, but it got the word out.”

McGrail: “Television, honestly, is the perfect medium. Not to lessen any impact from anybody else, but when you can show people and talk to people and make it experiential for people, then they understand.”

Wolfe: “The second year [of the radiothon], I was down at spring training, and Larry Lucchino pulls me into his office and says, ‘How do we do the same thing for NESN?’ And I said, ‘Well, why don’t we do the same thing? We’ll just get NESN onboard with us, and we’ll do it as a simulcast.’”

Larry Lucchino: “It really took off when it became a radio-telethon. I think it was the [second] year when NESN joined up, and they helped catapult it in terms of prominence and visibility.”

McGrail: “We thought we could, frankly, help as part of the overall effort. It was done the first year on WEEI radio, and we said, ‘You know what, we can bring a whole new audience to this.’ … Lo and behold, the next year we chipped in and donations tripled because of the audience we brought.”

Mirakian-Wheeler: “Dana-Farber, they want us to talk about adults, too. They don’t want people to think that it’s just for kids. But, of course, the kids really tug at the heart strings.”

Wolfe: “That second year it raised a million dollars. And I think the last $25,000 were committed by the [Red Sox] ownership group because they got the sense that there was such momentum building at the end of that night.”

Fountain: “Nobody wanted to leave [the first year], and still, nobody wants to leave. It’s two days, and we almost have to force staff and say, ‘You have to take shifts or you’re not going to be able to walk the next day.’ You’re so exhausted, but on day two, nobody wants to not be there if you go over another milestone.”

Joe Zarbano: “Honestly, there’s a group of behind-the-scenes individuals that are there at 5:30 in the morning — and before that — setting up and getting ready, and they don’t leave until midnight. And then they do it all over again for a second day in a row. It’s definitely a labor of love.”

Mirakian-Wheeler: “You don’t just show up on the telethon days ready to go.”

Zarbano: “It kind of feels like once it’s over, you really have to start thinking about the next year’s.”

Zarbano: “Those are all volunteers [answering the phones]. Basically, the Jimmy Fund sends us a sheet for WEEI friends, family, employees to sign up and volunteer. And it’s filled up in a matter of days, and the same thing for NESN, and the Jimmy Fund fills up the rest. I have family members always asking me, ‘Hey, can you save me a spot?’ There’s never enough room for everyone.”

Leandre: “Every single year, I’ll put on the telethon. I’ll just have it running all day in my house or on the radio while I’m driving, because I like to hear similar stories to my story, or even more successful in the sense that their cancer, they didn’t have it as long.”

Mirakian-Wheeler: “Long story short: People get cured from cancer. Look at this story from this little boy who had a long road with lots of casts and wheelchairs and probably his body not being 100 percent to this day, but he’s able to do what he loves to do. He plays baseball, and he turned into a really good kid.”

PAT

Tom Caron: “In ’04, there was a kid named Pat White who I met on our visit [to the clinic].”

Paul White (Pat’s father): “He was diagnosed in 1999. He had just turned 9. He went through, like, a year of chemotherapy and went into remission. Then it came back again.”

Lisa Scherber: “I remember just listening to him tell his story [on the air], and I was so proud of him. You take pride in these kids and how brave they are telling their story to the world.”

Meghan White (Pat’s sister): “I was 8 or 9, and I just remember it was one of the most exciting things he did. He actually wanted to be a sports newscaster. He had the charisma, and he loved going on.”

Caron: “There was a rain delay at a game he was at [with some friends], and I had to go on [the air] during the rain delay for NESN, and I pulled all these kids on TV. I kind of broke a bunch of NESN rules. I didn’t ask anybody, just put them on. We laughed so hard for about a half hour. He was this great kid, teenager, high school student, and trying to just be a kid, and not a kid with cancer. He was with all his friends, just a bunch of knuckleheads, and we laughed and had a great time.”

Paul White: “I said, ‘Patrick, why weren’t you nervous?’ And he said, ‘I don’t know, Dad. When the light went on, it just totally felt comfortable.’”

Pat White with Tom Caron on the NESN set in 2005. | Photo courtesy of the White family

Caron: “He told me that they were going to win the World Series. This was July of ’04, and so I said, ‘OK, here’s my number. You call me when they win the World Series.’ I remember driving home after Game 4 … and there’s this call from Pat White, a teenager who’s just jumping up and down celebrating with his family.”

Paul White: “That [year] was the third time [the cancer] came back. We were very hopeful that [his previous] surgery took care of it. He had a couple of really good years, a year and a half [when he was] strong. He was doing baseball. … It came back that last time when he was 13. It was August of 2004, and he battled it all the way until November of 2005.”

Caron: “What really amazed me was, for the next couple of years, his dad still came to the telethon. And his family and sisters still came to the telethon. And it was devastating for them to come back, because Pat had been at the telethon the year before, and it had been such an important moment for them. The fact that they were fighting back all of these emotions, all of the memories it was dredging up by them being back at the telethon, they were doing it because they knew it would help somebody else.”

Meghan White: “I have a twin sister [who works as a nurse]. I probably would want to be a nurse if I wasn’t so squeamish. … What I really love is, have you heard of a child-life specialist? They work in hospitals and actually kind of help kids overcome fears with surgery and drawing blood, and they help the other kids who are the patients’ brothers and sisters. And I would love to do that, because it feels like coming full circle, because I know they made my brother’s experience so much more positive and less scary.”

Paul White: “They were just so good to him.”

John Dennis: “There is a look of abject fear and consternation and just hopelessness in the parents’ faces [at the clinic].

Glenn Ordway: “I look in their parents’ eyes, and that’s where I see the pain.”

Dennis: “As much as you feel for the kids who are sick — some of them have got tubes in their arms, and others have no hair on their heads — as bad as you feel for them, you look at the parents, and you almost can relate to that more. You can just see the fear in their eyes, and every day they wake up, and they’re just praying to God that their kids can get better.”

Gerry Callahan: “The ones we call out to every year, the ones we make a particular plea to, are the parents who haven’t had to make one trip into the Dana-Farber or the Jimmy Fund Clinic. Have not had to sit in traffic, talk to docs, sit there all day wondering if their kids are going to survive. Those are the lucky ones. Those are the ones who should smile and write a check.”

Mike Andrews: “Did I ever think we would raise the kind of money that we have for the cause? I certainly at the start didn’t.”

Joe Castiglione: “We kept increasing and increasing, and at one point we hit $4 million before the recession.”

Suzanne Fountain: “Fast-forward 16 years later, we’re up to $49 million [total]. So, this year, we’ll go over the $50 million mark. The coolest thing is, every time we reach one of those milestones and they put it up on the Green Monster and on the Jumbotron, to kind of see that happen.”

Caron: “We’ll have people on who tell their stories about, they’re on their fifth clinical trial and their last chance, and just devastating stories. And the reason they’re coming on TV or radio and kind of bearing their soul is because there’s a belief that they’ll help raise some money. They’ll help someone else get early detection. They’re all doing it for the next person to walk through that door.”

Lisa Scherber: “For me, of course it raises all this money — which is so unbelievable, which is so wonderful — but I just think the biggest part for me is, it just raises awareness.”

Fountain: “If we had to pay for that advertising, you couldn’t [afford it].”

Ordway: “Eventually [cancer] affects your life or somebody who you love in your family’s life. Then you say, ‘Oh my God, what do I do?’ Well, I think by doing this every single year, we’re at least educating the people. We’re letting people know that we have the greatest research center and hospital for dealing with cancer in the world, and it’s right here in our backyard.”

Jason Wolfe: “The corporate people sometimes don’t understand the power of the message that gets out. Not to slam my old company, because they were obviously supportive, but there were times where I would hear things like, ‘Oh my God, the ratings on these two days are terrible. It’s going to mess up our whole ratings book.’ That never mattered. At least not to me, and it certainly didn’t matter to our team.”

Dale Arnold: “I don’t want to overemphasize this because, believe me, we don’t give a shit. But, this hurts our radio station. This hurts our ratings for a couple of days. There are people who would normally listen who don’t listen those two days. … None of us care. It doesn’t matter. When it went from one day to two days, and I remember people saying, ‘Wow, can you pull this off for two days?’ And we said, ‘Yes, we’ll do it.’”

Joe Zarbano: “It’s 36 hours of programming and marketing for this wonderful institution, this cancer hospital that people from all around the world come to visit. So, it kind of goes beyond the dollars.”

Sean McGrail: “I think it might be the most important thing we do here, honestly. I mean, we’ve had remarkable success here. NESN has grown to be the biggest network in the region. We tend to dominate the ratings in this region, and that’s wonderful. … But, on a consistent basis, this is doing good for tens of thousands of people, and we’re doing it year after year, and we’re seeing results.”

Wolfe: “Frankly, it’s the best thing I’ve ever done in the media business. We won a lot of awards at WEEI and have a great station with tremendous ratings and a lot of success, but it wouldn’t mean nearly as much if we didn’t do this event.”

Fountain: “It’s not always easy to listen to. There are stories that just break your heart, but you know by picking up that phone that in some way, you’re making somebody’s day better. And it doesn’t have to be for a million dollars, because that tote board keeps going up.”

Scherber: “I kind of forget we’re there raising money. I really do. I feel like it’s just so therapeutic in a way, or just so healing for our families to sort of know that there are people listening who care. They always say it takes a village, and I think to know there are complete strangers out there that listen to your story and then are calling in to give money, that’s sort of helps. So, for these families, now when they turn around, they know they’re not alone.”

MILES

Gerry Callahan: “I have a friend, this kid named Miles Goldberg.”

Lisa Scherber: “I think he was diagnosed [with osteosarcoma] when he was 11.”

Dale Arnold: “Before he fell ill, he was a hockey player, so he wanted to talk hockey with me. He had this radical surgery. He had his leg amputated at his knee, and they attached his ankle to his knee.”

Scherber: “He had what is called a rotationplasty.”

Arnold: “And he did that because he said he wanted to skate again, and the only way he could skate again was if they did this radical surgery.”

Scherber: “[The alternative] was not an option for him. He wanted to play hockey. He wanted to do baseball. He wanted to do football. He wanted to do it all, and he did. He really did.”

Callahan: “He was free, and he was smart, and he knew he was going to pass away. He knew it was grim, but he just made the most of it. He went to Europe. He went to D.C. on a trip. He tried to live as much as he could in the brief time he had. I believe he was 13.”

Scherber: “When Miles passed away, [Callahan and co-host Kirk Minihane] just were blown away. It hit them, because wow, they knew him. They didn’t just hear stories. They actually got to know him and the amazing kid he was.”

Callahan: “My buddy Miles went to a Celtics game, sat in the luxury box for a playoff game — I think it was a year ago in May — and went home to New Hampshire that night, and [within a week] passed away. Didn’t want to be in the hospital. Didn’t want to be in hospice. Just battled through it.”

Jen Goldberg (Miles’ mother, during the 2017 radio-telethon): “With Miles, you didn’t have to sugarcoat stuff. He wanted the truth. And he wanted to understand and be able to make informed decisions about his own care.”

Callahan: “Went to the game knowing [he was close to death]. He was a great kid, and then the next day he died.”

Scherber: “If you were in a conversation with him, especially about sports, but really anything, you could swear that he was like 40.”

Callahan (during the 2016 radio telethon): “Who’s your hero.”

Miles Goldberg: “Me.”

Callahan: “Why?”

Miles: “Well, this is something that I learned in Cooperstown by the guy who built all of Cooperstown. He always said to every player that went to be your own hero. And he was telling my entire team, ‘You just look in the mirror, and that’s who your hero is.’ And I feel really, really proud about that.”

Callahan: “He just blew you away. When you talk to a 13-year-old who knows he’s going to die, it’s hard not to lose it. Because they’re strong and they’re tough, and they’re so impressive, and you think how cruel that is. They’re not supposed to be doing this. They’re supposed to be climbing a freaking tree or something. They’re supposed to be riding the wave.”

Scherber: “At the end, he would text me little things. He was just the sweetest thing. He was on a date with his mom, and he was sending me pictures of the lobster. He loved his mom, and it was just this beautiful [moment]. You feel like you’re so privileged, and you’re so grateful that you had a piece of their life. We’re a small part of it, but for us, it meant the world to us to be a little piece of their amazing world.”

Jen Goldberg (during the 2017 radio-telethon): “Lisa Scherber said that she was almost surprised that I would be able to come down [to do the radio-telethon again] so soon, and she was sensitive to that. But when she first asked me, I wasn’t sure right away, and I thought about it about 24 hours, and I’m thinking, Miles absolutely would insist that I come down here. It’s almost like, ‘Ma, what’s the issue here?’ That’s why I’m here. I would love to write a giant check to the Jimmy Fund, and I’ll write as many smaller checks as I can.”

Jason Wolfe: “Eighty percent of the money that’s raised from this event, every single year, comes from people who donate $100 or less.”

Suzanne Fountain: “We have some sponsors, which are great, but it’s all smaller gifts. It’s $100, $120.”

Arnold: “But once in a while …”

Fountain: “We had a gentleman [named Ralph Bates] years ago who loved Dale Arnold and would listen to the radio-telethon every year. And then called in and said, ‘I’ll make a gift to Dana-Farber if Dale will come and visit.’”

Mike Andrews: “(He) decided to give a million dollars to the radio-telethon, and it was a significant part of what he had, but he felt like that was something he really wanted to do.”

From the Dana-Farber publication Impact in 2007: “Moved by the touching stories of the broadcast, Bates resolved to help by making a $1 million gift to Dana-Farber. Half [of the money] established the Ralph E. Bates Cancer Research and Technology Fund to support DFCI’s technology platform, and the other $500,000 will support the construction of the new Center for Cancer Care building.”

Wolfe: “Just a retired guy, had a lot of money.”

Arnold: “I remember he called in, and we all just kind of looked at each other. And my first thought was, ‘Don’t mess around with something like this. Don’t be a prank caller when we’re trying to raise money to fight cancer in kids.’ He wasn’t a prank caller. He was real.”

Wolfe: “We were there when he wrote the check out to Mike Andrews. He was, like, goofing around. His hand was shaking. ‘I can’t believe I’m writing this big of a check.’ And everybody laughed. But it was just awesome. That right there just tells you that there are good people everywhere, especially around here, and it’s just such a meaningful cause that it prompts people to do what you never expect they would.”

Arnold: “He felt moved, and he wanted to do something. He had the wherewithal to do it. As I’ve said every year, for some people, a $10 donation is a big deal. And I sincerely, honestly, appreciate anybody and everybody who can make a $10 donation.”

Andrews: “And it’s not just in New England because NESN reaches across the country, so we get contributions from every state. That’s one of the goals.”

Sean McGrail: “We put up the map [to show] we need a couple of states at the end. We’ll say, ‘Look, we haven’t heard from North Dakota yet.’ It’s amazing that someone will pick the phone up and contribute immediately [from North Dakota]. I think for maybe the last 10 years or so, we’ve had all 50 states contributing.”

Scherber: “It’s easy for people listening to these stories to be a part of this. If you’re going to listen to the story, be a part of the whole book and help.”

Callahan: “Every year we wonder, is this the year of the fatigue, the compassion fatigue? Is this the year that the phones stop ringing, and it hasn’t happened yet.”

Arnold: “Once in a while, you’ll get a guy like [Ralph Bates], or somebody will call and donate $50,000 or something, and you just go, ‘Oh my God!’ And that guy blew us all away when it happened.”

Fountain: “You don’t even realize sometimes that’s where people get a seed planted in them to want to make a gift to Dana-Farber.”

Arnold: “I’ve always said, I’m always afraid I won’t find the right words to get people to act. Maybe I found the right words that day.”

TARA

Tara Daniels (26-year-old who beat cancer three times): “You don’t think about what you’re doing while you’re doing it. It’s only after the fact that it comes across: Crap, I did almost five years of chemo in the last 10 years.”

Dale Arnold: “She was a spunky, feisty fighter anyway, and she did great. And she fought it off [in 2009], and we were all happy. And then she relapsed [in 2012]. God love her, she didn’t give in. She fought it off, and she beat it again. And then she was told [in 2016], she had it a third time.”

Lisa Scherber: “We’re in bathrooms crying in the clinic when someone relapses.”

Arnold: “The third time, she had to have a transplant, bone marrow transplant, which is really radical. It messes with your system.”

Daniels: “If it had been even 10 years ago, I might not have had that option. I might have been told, you’re out of luck. As a 24-year-old, that’s not something you ever think of hearing.”

Arnold: “I was in visiting her at the hospital, and she didn’t have any hair, and she was next to nothing in terms of weight. But you could see in her eyes, she wasn’t going to let this beat her.”

Daniels: “There’s something about a cancer diagnosis that’s so isolating. When I was first diagnosed, I was a junior in high school, and I went to my junior prom on a large, large dose of pain meds. And I had no hair. And that in and of itself was isolating. And then I was a junior in college when I was diagnosed (the second time), and so when I was senior in college I wasn’t able to do all of the senior college things.”

Arnold: “After she finally got home from the transplant … we could only visit on her front porch because they were so concerned about germs that they wouldn’t let any visitors in her house. … Since then, God willing, she’s been great.”

Tara Daniels at Fenway Park during a ceremony before a playoff game in 2016. | Photo by Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images)

Daniels: “If it weren’t for the research that you are helping to fund at the events that [the Jimmy Fund does] and the donations that [donors] make, there’s a very good chance I wouldn’t be standing here today. And my mom wouldn’t still have four kids. My niece wouldn’t still have two aunts. And I just rescued a puppy — he’s not a puppy, he’s 8 years old — but that dog would still be sitting in a shelter. There’s so many different things. You don’t realize all the things that you impact.”

Arnold: “She’s one of the people I hold out as why we do what we do, because she’s still with us. She’s still out there able to live her life, where 15, 20 years ago, she would have been gone.”

Geoffrey Goose (16-year-old diagnosed with lymphoma in February): “As unlucky as it is to get cancer or go through chemo, it’s lucky to be in the city that I’m in and the clinic I’m in. … At no point was it like, oh, I can’t have the drugs I need because the Jimmy Fund is underfunded. Or, we can’t go to Florida this year because the Jimmy Fund is underfunded. That never crossed my mind when I was going through it, and it shouldn’t. And it’s things like the telethon, things like the [Jimmy Fund] Walk, things like the Pan-Mass Challenge that make that happen.”

Scherber: “I go back on that radio-telethon, and I think about all of the kids who have been on and talking. It’s crazy to me that these kids are so strong and so powerful. We’re just along for the ride.”

Tom Caron: “You can’t help but think of everyone you’ve met over the years doing the telethon. The patients who didn’t make it — Todd Schwartz, Pat White, some of the other people we’ve talked about it — they’re there very much live with you as you go in there. And then every year, you meet new heroes.”

Goose: “I’m going on [the radio-telethon] Tuesday morning … for the next kid that’s about to enter into my shoes, whether it be today or tomorrow, whenever it is.”

Gerry Callahan: “We want as many of these kids — kids like Avalanna and Todd and Miles — to tell their story and connect with the listener. It amazes me, too, because we don’t give anyone anything. Usually, you’re auctioning things off or giving tickets or whatever — meet the players or something — trying to get money. We just say, call and give us money and support the greatest cause in the world.”

Jason Wolfe: “Unfortunately, there’s always another Ben Finer or Dan Williams or Patrick White or Avalanna Routh. There are just too many kids, and adults, too”

John Dennis: “Doctors that I’ve heard talk say there will be a time in our not-so-distant future that we are going to be treating cancer the way we treat other diseases, with pills, and so that it is not a life-threatening thing.”

Glenn Ordway: “It used to be a scary word. It was the nasty C-word and it was frightening. It’s not as frightening anymore.”

Dr. Stephen Sallan: “It’s not polio yet, or it’s not smallpox, but it’s definitely a treatable disease for almost everybody, and curable for about 60 percent of adults and maybe 75 to 80 percent of children. There’s still some real bad actors in there, don’t get me wrong. Real bad. But, those are the ones that we’re actively going after today, sometimes for the first time.”

Caron: “I will tell you, after all those years of being [at Dana-Farber as] a host, walking through those front doors as a patient is a little sobering. … I never needed chemo. I never needed radiology. I’m not trying to glorify any struggle I went through. What I did get was a brief glimpse into that abyss, that diagnosis, that call that you have cancer. … That’s the beginning of a lot of people’s frightening journey, and you’re trying to stave off the gloom and doom, and what’s going to happen if they tell me it’s spread? All of that is going through your mind. But because I’ve heard so many stories, and so many great finishes and great endings and happy endings, I absolutely trusted that the people there were going to be able to help me deal with it.”

Daniels: “It’s some other world. If you take one step inside the Jimmy Fund, you’ll understand how different and how special it is.”

Scherber: “Of course we have the funerals, but you also see the weddings and the college graduations and the high school graduations. … It’s those little nuggets of magic that, as staff, we see every day. Every day, along with the sad. We’re so fortunate that we get to give those little nuggets of magic — I don’t know how else to say it — out to people so that, when they hear a story, they can hopefully understand that if these kids are being treated here at the Jimmy Fund Clinic, they’re going to be having some joy also brought to them to help them go through this.”

Mike Andrews: “Playing baseball for 13 years, I got to play in two World Series, won one of them, and made an All-Star team one year. Just had 13 wonderful years, but they never compare to the 31 that I had at the Dana-Farber (as Jimmy Fund chairman). I realized just what is important and what is just fun.”

Arnold: “Everybody I know is connected to cancer in one way, shape or form. Both of my parents died of cancer. All of us have this feeling of, I wish we could do something. Well, we get to do something. We’re given an opportunity and a platform to try to accomplish something, and then we get to see the people that we’re doing it for. It makes such a difference. We’re raising money. We’re helping research. We’re fighting the fight. But, oh, by the way, here’s Tara, who’s alive, by the way, in some measure because of the things that we’ve done.”

Chad Jennings covers the Red Sox for The Athletic. He was on the Red Sox beat previously for the Boston Herald, and before moving to Boston, he covered the Yankees for The Journal News and contributed regularly to USA Today. Follow Chad on Twitter @chadjennings22.